Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Golden Boy: A Quick Review Of The New Simon Love Album

The new album from Simon Love is the sort of thing that should charm that swatch of the indie community who cherish both Momus and The Monkees. Sincerely, S. Love x, out Friday on Tapete Records, is delightful and archly funny. That the record succeeds at being both emotionally fulfilling and ironically effete is no mean feat, really.

The too clever by half"God Bless The Dick Who Let You Go" is a blast, while the lush "Joey Ramone" imagines a world where Brian Wilson is off writing odes to the front-man of that seminal punk band. Elsewhere, "I Fucking Love You" soars, equal parts The Divine Comedy and Jellyfish, while "Golden Boy" is pure-Dukes of The Stratosphear goodness. At his very best, like on the lovely "All This Dicking Around (Is Bringing Me Down)", Simon Love manages to pen a song that compares favorably to stuff from the peak years of the Britpop boom, nods to both Oasis and Blur apparent here. Still, for all that's a bit silly here lyrically, there are lush moments that reference the best compositions from earlier legends. And that Simon Love makes this work without seeming like he's just an arched eyebrow goof is impressive. The material here is so good that the funny bits don't really distract a listener.

Fans of Martin Newell, Damon Albarn, Bowie, and Supergrass will dig lots of Sincerely, S. Love x as much as I did. A favorable bit of Britpop and power-pop, this album charmed me immensely.

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About Me

I write about stuff I like.
Born in Washington, D.C., in 1967, I spent most of my life in Maryland before I moved to Hong Kong at the very end of 2011. I worked in Kowloon, and lived on Lamma Island, for nearly 3 years, and then I moved back to Maryland with my wife at the end of August 2014. When I was younger, I worked in 3 record stores in College Park, Maryland, from 1987 to 1990 and those jobs gave me a lot of joy, as well as a musical education. I was once a huge fan of the cinema of Hong Kong, especially Shaw Brothers titles. An Anglophile, I still gravitate to British films and music. My youth was spent on Marvel comics, and Starlog and Famous Monsters magazines; Universal and Hammer horror movies; the work of Ray Harryhausen; classic American films of the 1930s; Hanna-Barbera cartoons; music from the glory days of American AM radio; lousy TV reruns; Mego toys; and Godzilla flicks...